Attempting to define the number of words in the English language is really an absurd act, depending entirely on where you set the boundaries of what is and isn’t a word in the language. Including all possibly acceptable words (regional variants, technological, medical and scientific jargon, words recently adopted from other languages), I’ve heard that the number could be as high as 2 million. But that was just an estimate.

Attempting to define the number of words in the English language is really an absurd act, depending entirely on where you set the boundaries of what is and isn’t a word in the language. Including all possibly acceptable words (regional variants, technological, medical and scientific jargon, words recently adopted from other languages), I’ve heard that the number could be as high as 2 million. But that was just an estimate.

]]>By: Lucas Gonzehttp://battellemedia.com/archives/2009/06/englishs_millionth_word_web_20.php#comment-4187
Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:28:28 +0000http://battellemedia.com/archives/2009/06/englishs_millionth_word_web_20.php#comment-4187Not to rain on this parade, because this is a fun thing to talk about, but how many words there are is a very fuzzy question. It’s so fuzzy that the idea of a precise 1,000,000 is pretty hard to support.